But Marsh insists the north London club are far from being one of England’s top clubs and wants the Welshman, who has been in sensational form in recent months, to seek a move away.

He told talkSPORT: “When you look at teams like Manchester United, Man City and Chelsea at the start of the season, you say, ‘I wonder who they are going to sign’?

“When you talk about teams like Spurs, you say, ‘who can they hang on to? Can they hang on to [Luka] Modric, can they hang on to [Dimitar] Berbatov’? Now everyone is saying, ‘can they hang on to Bale’?

“Spurs become a top team when everybody is saying, ‘I wonder who Spurs are going to get’ and it’s a real, proper top player. That’s when you can say they have arrived.

“If Spurs go out and sign a really top world-class footballer like Man City have done in [Carlos] Tevez and [Sergio] Aguero, that’s when I will believe Spurs are anything other than a team that are going nowhere. They are doing fantastic, by the way, but they are not there.

“If I was advising Gareth Bale, I would tell him to get out of Spurs as soon as he can, because it has run its course.

“A couple of years ago when he scored that hat-trick against Inter Milan away from home he was stunningly brilliant. There have been about ten games this season where he has been stunningly brilliant. But it hasn’t been over a long period of games. It has been hit there, miss there, hit there.

“He has been on a roll recently, for about three months, where he has been nothing but outstanding. So my point to Bale would be, before you go into a little slump and don’t score for nine games and everyone says, ‘well Bale is not the player we all thought he was’, get out, get to Barcelona or Real Madrid and become one of the biggest players in the world.”

Quote:

If I was advising Gareth Bale, I would tell him to get out of Spurs as soon as he can